Back around the middle of the previous century (actually, 1952) when my family
moved to Quincy, it was fun to watch G-10 0-6-0s waddle down Front Street. If
you're not familiar with how streets are named, let me offer this: "Front" is
often the street next to the levee or, like in Quincy, next to the river. The
river, of course, being the Mississippi. ("Railroad Street" is most often
alongside the railroad, but Quincy didn't have one of those.) The freight
house was at 2nd and Broadway ("Broadway", running east from the river, was the
widest street in town, since it was intended to have a railroad running down
the middle of it.) The grand old Quincy depot was at 2nd and Oak, a couple of
blocks north. The shops, roundhouse, and yards were down at river level, which
was about fifty feet lower than 2nd St., and were all north of Broadway. The
line that ran south to Marble Head, Fall Creek, and New Canton came out of the
yard there and ran along the west edge of Front St. for about twelve blocks.
Then it went thru the Gardner-Denver plant (they still make air compressors for
locomotives), a straw yard for the cardboard outfit in town, and past the
soybean elevators. The Wabash came up this line from Hannibal, Missouri, and
ran along Front St. until they veered off to get up to their freight house and
team track along York St.
There was a track that came south around the freight house, bridged Broadway,
and served warehouses along 3rd St. to Maine St.
Nowadays, the Burlington Junction Ry. (unless they've changed their name) uses
this same track along Front St., but only goes a few miles south of downtown.
There's a lot of work to be done in town, and the original Q yard is still
used. BNSF, of course, does the line haul in and out of Quincy, but they're out
of the local switching business.
The old depot is long gone, the roundhouse was demolished a few years back for
a sewer project, but the stone shop building - which dates from the 1850s - is
still in use. And, of course, the G-10 has been replaced by a Geep. PAW
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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